Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) tells Fox & Friends: It was inappropriate for me to call Harry Reid an “absolute a–hole.”
A very interesting letter from TPM Reader JS on a little discussed part of the ‘cancellation’ and rollover story, namely that a lot of insurers, far from ‘dropping’ or ‘canceling’ coverage are working hard to keep their existing coverage holders from going to the exchanges to see the better deals they can get …
I am not terribly different than some other writers who have been in the individual market. We have BCBS covering a family of four with a variety of pre-existing (but not life threatening) conditions. Like others, BCBS of Illinois informed us that our policy would no longer be valid after January 1, 2014. They also informed us that they would role us automatically into a slightly more expensive (and largely comparable) plan if we did nothing.
Sahil Kapur on the early outlines of a budget deal — emphasis on early.
You gotta love it when Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) rages on possible Social Security cuts.
As we’ve reported over the last couple of days (here and here), insurance companies who are participating in the Obamacare exchanges have big concerns about extending the open enrollment period past the currently scheduled end date of March 31.
It sounds like HHS has heard and understands those concerns.
Kathleen Sebelius said this morning during her congressional testimony that the deadline wasn’t moving: “It’s important for the insurance partners to know who is in their pool so again they can stay in the market next year and know who they are insuring.”
Barton Gellman has a new piece up at the Washington Post about how the NSA is collecting vast amounts of data from the Google and Yahoo clouds.
The newly revealed NSA operation — called MUSCULAR — is ostensibly being deployed against communication links between Google and Yahoo data centers outside of the United States, where FISA doesn’t apply. But as Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) notes in Gellman’s piece:
From TPM (Non) Reader DS …
I just read your blog stating that changes and or losses of peoples coverage is being overstated by repubs. I truly wish that you had a bigger budget for research and were writing about something you know about.
Weiner blames NYT reporter for going too easy on him on texting in political comeback article.
Republican opportunism over the problems with HealthCare.gov was always going to have its limits as an effective strategy. The problems will eventually be fixed, and more importantly the critique — you should be able to access this terrible program more easily — had a built-in dissonance.
That’s why this week’s attack line about you’re not really able to keep your old individual insurance plan resonates more, even if its disingenuous and is predicated on the ridiculous notion that most people with individual plans actually like their plan.
You could see the shift in GOP strategy pretty clearly during yesterday’s grilling of Kathleen Sebelius on the Hill. The hearing was ostensibly about the HealthCare.gov problems, but the focus was on President Obama’s “you can keep you plan” promise. Dylan Scott was there and filed this report.